Toshiba 36ZP18P/Q Review

Overall Rating

Picture Quality,
Sound Quality.

Weight!!

This Toshiba 36ZP18P/Q widescreen T.V. is HUGE!!. It has an 81 cm screen, but even for a screen of this size the quality is superb. This T.V. doesn't have loads of fancy features, but it has everything you really need, including 3 SCART sockets, only one of which is RGB compatible, but with a Video & DVD connected, I got everything to work OK.

DVD playback in widescreen is excellent, and the main problem I was expecting with a widescreen T.V. was that normal pictures look "fat" when viewed in widescreen - but not a problem with this T.V. - there are selectable screen sizes, which detect automatically but can be overridden, thus allowing you to have normal T.V. look totally in proportion on widescreen. My overall impression is that this is a high quality piece of Kit. The Picture frame (the border around the tube) is only about 4 cm, so it doesn't look bulky, even though it is deep.

Would I recommend this T.V.? A resounding YES. It is expensive, but by shopping around, I got nearly £450 of the rrp, and it was delivered, assembled and set up by Toshiba themselves - but it did require 2 people to carry it. Plus, the box it comes in is large enough to make a playhouse for the kids too!!

Members' Comments onFozzy.'s Review

• asm. on 21st Oct 2002

  I bought one of these and, although it is a well designed TV from the outside, I think its picture has a number of technical problems (which for the fussy person become quite annoying)... for a start the picture geometry is awful (a straight horizontal line appears skewed, changes of scene produce excessive "breathing" especially visible on SAT channels that have fixed logos or text) and over time the screen becomes magnetised (despite keeping it away from magnets or lumps of steel)... a white screen has tinges of blue and purple on the edges and loses focus there. Also, the 5.1 decoder onboard is rendered useless by the fact that not all of the six outputs are available offboard (no sub-out or centre). The fact that the onboard sub and centre are so terrible means that I had to go for a £700 offboard system consisting of 5.1 DD amp and hifi speakers. I would spend an extra £200 and get the Sony 36wide instead... which is what I was going to do before I got wooed by the nice external design of the Sony.

• RON. on 9th May 2003

  ALL large flat CRT screens will suffer with geometry and focus problems. These are simply due to the original CRT design being pushed to is limits. An electron beam has a fixed focus point, as well as being affected by the magnetic effects of the planet, and without the electronics used today to manipulate this focus point the focus at the edges would be really bad. The larger the screen the worse these effects are. The only feature Toshiba didn't include was a geomagnetic adjusment to rotate the picture, and the issue of purity I believe only affected a few of them. As for the 'breathing' are you serious? This happens an ALL TV's! It is caused by a sudden change in beam current level and this model is one of the best at controlling it. You are referring to EHT regulation and, unless you invest huge sums of money into creating a massive power supply, this will always remain, and the power supply in the 36ZP is huge compared to anybody else's.
  
  If you are going to criticise this product please be aware that the effects you are referring to are inherent within a CRT based system, and specifically with flat CRT designs. To achieve a flat face a huge amount of leaded glass has to be used to maintain the mechanical integrity that ensures the CRT does not implode. This can cause a bluish tinge to be seen on the screen at the extremes of vision during bright/white scenes. They also trade a certain level of geometric accuracy, purity and focus against the levels of screen glare associated with round faced CRT's when sunlight catches the face. It is the case that all manufacturers will suffer the effects you refer to, and to the same varying degrees.

• george. on 2nd Jul 2003

  I received 1 of these sets as a replacement for a Tosh 40whdb projection set that had 3 sets of guns in 18 months , It was a toss up between this model and the Panasonic equivelant. The Tosh is now just over 1 year old and has the shadows on both sides of the screen , that are particularly noticable when viewing bright colours ,
  anyway , after much emailing to Tosh tech support who told me it was a design feature , I emailed them some pics of the problem , they forwarded my pics to their local area technical manager , who came out and looked at the set .
  
  He made the usual noises about it being a characteristic and such (i,e, design fault) he played about with the settings , I then played a video that i had compiled to show him the problem first hand , and to his credit he said it was the worst 1 he had seen and would authorise a replacement tube to be fitted.
  
  
  So from my point of view its always worth complaining you just never no where it will get you .And I will never buy another Toshiba product again
  

• Kingdom Come on 18th Oct 2004

  George, thankz for the info and to everyone else. For what it's worth in the research I have done recently, Sony & Philips win hands down. Someone I know has a Toshiba and the white lines down the sides are ALWAYS present. Picture quality being probably the weakest you can find.